Airlie Beach to Brisbane

Alrighty! Here is part 2 of my East Coast trip!

Town of 1770 was, from what I saw, really really nice. I really wish we could have stayed for longer than one night. We stayed at a hostel called Cool Bananas, and it was pretty much the most perfect hostel I could have wanted. It was so colorful (the walls were various shades of ocean blue) and friendly (the receptionist gave us a nice history of the place that made me want to stay longer in the first place!) and had the most adorable pug. While we were using the computer, he jumped into my lap and started licking everyone, and all the while he was just snorting with contentness.

Aside from the hostel, though, the night was really nice. After the 8 hours of driving turned into 10.5 hours (thanks, Brisbane construction) I was worried that my birthday was going to be ruined. But no! We ended up getting a really nice dinner along the beach and then opening a bottle of champagne for dessert :) We wanted to drink it at the beach, but this place is so far in the middle of nowhere that the beach was pitch black. Nice, but scary.

The next day we headed to Rainbow Beach. Our hostel there was extremely crowded, since most people only stop at Rainbow Beach to go to Fraser Island. Here is where we saw our first jellyfish- little blue things dotted the entire beach. We even saw one in the water....yikes...but we still decided to go surfing. Unlike the monstrous 9 ft, 10 ft boards we had on our lesson at Middleton Beach, the boards we got here were about 7.5 ft and plastic (no foam for us this time!) It was much more difficult to surf on these- you could immediately tell that they were much less stable, and so it took a few tries to even get up. Surfing is a sport of patience; in the morning, we were waiting for about 15-20 minutes without even getting a good swell. But once low tide came it became much easier to catch waves. There was this random guy swimming close to us who was giving me pointers, too. Much appreciated, whoever you are! :)

Our last days were in Brisbane. Brisbane had the crappiest weather, which is almost a good thing because I would rather have crappy weather in a city than on the beach. There isn't much to do in Brisbane per se- in 3 days, we completely covered the city's historical, architectural, and political centers, and we were even able to make a trip to the cultural center to see some art and hang out at the lagoon. Overall, I think Brisbane was the worst part of the trip just because that's where the goodbyes had to be given. Blech.

But now I'm travelling home tomorrow! I'm ready to wrap everything up for the year. Thanks for a good semester, Adelaide!